Survey on Deleting Comments

1. 93

   ziyenaposted 6 years ago

   Has anyone removed a portion or all of their comments from each published article, and if so, do you think this has helped or hindered your Google ranking and traffic?

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   1. 53

      boyatdelhiposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Never thought of removing comments as they are treated as accolades.
      
      It may affect Google ranking and traffic, if it contains some keywords which you missed out.

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      1. 93

         ziyenaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         True

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2. 75

   theraggededgeposted 6 years ago

   I have gone through some articles and removed low quality comments. I also never approve the 'great article' ones unless they include something that is relevant to the content.
   
   I don't know whether it improves Google rankings or not. All I want to do is improve reader experience.

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   1. 93

      ziyenaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, agreed.  Relevancy is key

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3. 93

   ziyenaposted 6 years ago

   I've noticed that much of the commenting that I had was related to friendly banter, which I've enjoyed, but unfortunately had to delete because I felt it may have hindered the overall scope of things.  Much of my articles are niched under Owlcation, which at one time did somewhat well considering most of my articles were more intricate to search rather than general topics (granted i've been writing more general topics now)  ... but since the dreaded Google updates, nothing seems to gage my traffic any more, even after major edit revamp.  I've resorted to wiping the comments in a last ditch effort.  Also deleting articles which have not helped.  May or may not be a wise decision, but we shall see.  I'm feeling baffled and a bit defeated after putting so much time and effort into what feels like very little result, especially since I'm overwhelmingly niched with quite a few  on the top pages of search.  I just don't get it anymore.   I'm sure there are others out there feeling the same pressure.

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4. 77

   lobobrandonposted 6 years ago

   I do the same as what Bev already said.

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5. 84

   jansharesposted 6 years ago

   I appreciate any comments, even "great article," and don't remove them. The only "comment" I remove is when a spammer leaves a link. Those don't happen very often. I don't know if keeping or removing comments helps or not.

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6. 59

   Erudite Scholarposted 6 years ago

   I enjoy reading comments.I do not delete them unless of course they are spammy links or disrespectful.

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7. 91

   Dolores Monetposted 6 years ago

   As many have said, I do not allow rubbish comments or pointless comments of the "nice hub" variety. Many times I've read articles outside HP and found some very helpful or interesting ones. So I keep the interesting ones. One of my articles gets a lot of comments and questions and I get rid of most of the older ones because I think that too many bog the article down. Some time ago, after one of the Google purges, I unloaded a lot of comments and found that traffic increased afterwards.
   
   I used to enjoy the friendly banter but Google doesn't. If you are here to write or have fun, that's great. But if you want to appease Big G, you have to do what they like. So, no more silly puns or wandering wildly off topic.

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   1. 93

      ziyenaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Thinking along the same lines ...  Thanks

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   2. 96

      Bedbugabscondposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I don't allow bad comments either as they are regarded as user generated spam.
      
      This comes directly from the Google Quality Guidelines:
      
      "This type of spam can be harmful to your site in several ways including:
      
      Low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings.
      Spam can distract and annoy your users and lower the reputation of your site.
      Unintended traffic from unrelated content on your site can slow down your site and raise bandwidth costs.
      Google might remove or demote pages overrun with user-generated spam to protect the quality of our search results.
      Content dropped by spammers can lead to malicious sites that can negatively affect your users.
      It’s important to find ways to protect your website from this kind of malicious spam. Here are some ideas for reducing or preventing comment spam on your website."
      
      The quality guidelines go in-depth as what qualifies as comment spam, or user generated spam. I follow those guidelines when deciding which comments to approve and which to delete.
      
      You can get the official Google take on it here https://support.google.com/webmasters/a … ic=6001971

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      1. 93

         ziyenaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         I've never allowed Spam either ... I think my concerns related to friendly banter that gets off topic or any negative comments that may hurt quality.  Helpful info on spamming.  Thanks for sharing.

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         1. 96

            Bedbugabscondposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            I don't enjoy having to delete a comment I quite like. But, I do understand why it has to be done. It's really a shame to lose the playful, friendly banter, though.

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            1. 93

               ziyenaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               Yes, good memories among the commenters and do miss the good old days ... before the Niches & dominance of the Google machine. Wish I could continue with these thoughts but it's nothing but a downward spiral from here.  Cheers

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   3. 79

      Jeremy Gillposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      When commenting on other works, I usually do some variation of "great article" followed by a thought or question, hopefully giving both the support and the substance in one.
      
      I've noticed my standards for which comments I'll approve have increased as years pass; now, even a good comment might get excluded if its grammar is bad enough.

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